Posts tagged independent contractors
Commentary: Cutting red tape for 64 million American workers
June 1, 2025 // Americans and freedom are a perfect match. We don’t want the government dictating every aspect of our lives. Unelected bureaucrats have no role in deciding how everyday Americans should do their work. That’s why at Americans for Prosperity, we’ve always supported the right of workers to choose what type of work best suits them, and bills like the Modern Worker Empowerment Act and the Modern Worker Security Act do just that.
Independent Contractors Take Center Stage for ‘Empowering the American Worker’
May 27, 2025 // However, expert witness Dr. Liya Palagashvili showed data of the deliberate harm done through California’s law AB5 and its ABC test that is also embedded in the federal Protecting the Right to Organize Act (PRO) Act and other statewide legislation seeking to restrict the work of independent professionals. Now, these results are causal, meaning we can definitely say that ABC tests cause these negative outcomes. No other studies to date have found positive employment effects from these laws. The research shows that restrictive ABC tests do not create more work opportunities. They eliminate both independent and W-2 jobs.
Kim Kavin: The Tangled Web
May 23, 2025 // I know how most writers’ minds work. I have a well-honed instinct for spotting a thread I should pull on because the facts might be tangled up in some kind of web. This hyperlink in Newsweek was a different kind of typo. The words “2020 analysis” actually did lead to a report about independent contractors—one that was written not in 2020, but instead in 2009. A wrong hyperlink of that nature is a red flag to any decent editor that there’s probably an association in the writer’s mind between the words in the hyperlink and where that link goes. Any experienced editor will pull on that thread to figure out if there’s an actual problem with the facts.
Committee on Education and the Workforce: Hearing Recap: “Empowering the Modern Worker”
May 21, 2025 // “The way people do work in America is changing,” said Workforce Protections Subcommittee Chairman Ryan Mackenzie (R-PA) when he opened today’s hearing that discussed legislative solutions to protect independent contractors’ status and allow them to pursue certain benefits if they so choose.
Op-ed: California Legislature should drop latest attack on gig workers
April 21, 2025 // “The bill’s utter lack of detail is a problem,” William Messenger told us; he’s vice president and legal director of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which defends workers’ right not to be controlled by unions. “It’s almost like they’re giving that department the authority to just sort of make up its own labor law.” He contrasted that with Massachusetts, whose voters last November passed Question 3, which enacts gig driver rules, but runs to 33 pages and, among other things, details a hearing and appeals process.
Déjà Vu All Over Again
April 14, 2025 // Reclassification attempts began with a media narrative, then blue-state legislation. The same thing is happening now with sectoral organizing.
Op-Ed: Question 3 Still a Question: Massachusetts’ Experiment in Sectoral Bargaining for Gig Workers
April 10, 2025 // These impracticalities explain why Question 3 embraces sectoral bargaining. Under this regime, once the drivers form a union, that union will represent all the drivers in the state, no matter what rideshare company they work for. (Rideshare companies can also team up to simplify the negotiations.) This will put the drivers in a vastly superior bargaining position than if they had to incrementally organize smaller units of drivers or even company by company, as is the norm under the NLRA. Under the NLRA, organizers would next have to get the support of 30% of drivers in a bargaining unit before being able to call an election. But how do organizers reach that 30%? For rideshare drivers, there is no workplace where everyone congregates. The closest equivalent is the airport parking lot, where many drivers wait to get a ride request. But to even encounter 30% of drivers there, much less to convince that 30%, could be a prohibitively high bar. Additionally, driver turnover is high. By the time 30% is convinced, those drivers may have moved on, a new cohort taking their place. Part-timers also pose a problem. For these reasons, Question 3 requires that the would-be union collect signatures from only 5% of Active Drivers (defined as those that have completed more than the median number of rides in the last six months). That is a much more plausible bar to clear, given that rideshare drivers are quite literally a moving target, in time and in space.
California: The Lost Report
April 1, 2025 // On December 3, 2020, almost a year after California’s freelance-busting law, Assembly Bill 5, went into effect, the California Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights was created to study AB5’s civil rights implications. The committee’s officially designated term ended December 4, 2024. There were hours and hours of testimony, much of it recorded on video. But the committee never issued a report based on all this testimony its members heard. Members of the committee say they were told that if they issued individual statements in the absence of any committee report, they would be failing to comply with the Federal Advisory Committee Act and the rules of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
What was the impact of AB5 on California’s marginalized communities?
March 31, 2025 // Esther Hermida, a representative of the American Alliance of Professional Translators and Interpreters (AAPTI) testified about AB5’s impact on thousands of citizens in her industry comprised of 75 percent women. One professional translator, Ildiko Santana, reported she started her small business in 2000 as an immigrant and woman of color. She lost all 50 clients and all her income in 2020 when AB5 went into effect.
Free the Economy podcast with Vinnie Vernuccio of the Institute for the American Worker
March 27, 2025 // Our interview for Episode 116 of the Free the Economy podcast is with Vinnie Vernuccio of the Institute for the American Worker. We talk about labor unions, independent contractors, right-to-work laws, port automation, and the future of the American workforce. Free the Economy is hosted by Richard Morrison. Our co-producer and editor is Destry Edwards. Keep up with new episodes by following us on Twitter at @freethe_economy and read our episode summaries, with links to the stories we cover, at cei.org/blog.